Line #11 YMMV/TheNextFoodNetworkStar


1	* BigLippedAlligatorMoment:
2	** In one Season 7 episode, Penny and Mary Beth are having a verbal catfight in front of the judges, arguing over Penny's behavior. Mary Beth is mid-sentence when out of nowhere Penny literally starts making cat noises, makes her hands into a claw-like shape, and starts pawing at the air in front of Mary Beth's face. Mary Beth and the judges weren't really sure how to respond to that. When Penny competes on ''Series/{{Chopped}} All-Stars'' the following year, she does the cat thing again during her introduction, this time [[SeanConneryIsAboutToShootYou directly facing the camera and clawing at the audience.]]
3	** Season 6: Dzintra, who already had a reputation as a hot mess and {{Cloudcuckoolander}}, excitedly informed the ConfessionCam that "Dzintra loves to dance! Dzintra loves to twirl!" Even without the ThirdPersonPerson, she still would have come across as more than a bit odd.
4	** In Season 8, the contestants are doing a challenge where they have to present food on a runway at a fashion show. When Nikki of Team Bobby presents her pork chops and then leaves, Giada wonders aloud "Is this runway food?" Bobby retorts, "It doesn't matter," and Giada insists "Yes it ''does!!!''". Bobby again says it doesn't matter, and Giada again insists that it does. That being said, mere minutes later they were perfectly fine again and the odd moment was never mentioned again.
5	** Also from S8, during the ''Chopped'' challenge, Michelle freaks out because she thinks that Giada is constantly staring at her and insinuates that she feels like Giada is somehow fixated on her; the camera then cuts to Giada, who has the most sedate, bored-looking expression ever, and appears to be just casually viewing all the contestants rather than being the creepy stalker that Michelle is making her out to be. Later during the judging round, Michelle quips that Giada was freaking her out and everyone starts laughing, Giada included.
6	* CreatorsPet: Melissa D'Arabian. The network and other personalities seem to love her. However, many viewers don't. Several reasons include 1) having that perpetual bitch face, which leads to 2) coming off as unnecessarily aggressive, which leads to 3) having that aura of being fake and not personable. In addition, there's 4) Having the least creative pilot and show which meant that 5) Jeffrey Saad was passed over and screwed, even though Jeffrey was a lot more personable and authoritative.
7	* CriticalDissonance: In-universe. In season 10, the final 3 came down to Lenny, Luca, and Nicole. On the Food Network website, Nicole got plenty of love, Luca was so-so (though because not many people commented on him) but there was a certain hatedom for Lenny for being fake. However, the elimination went in that same order. Nicole, then Luca, leaving Lenny as the winner.
8	* EliminationHoudini:
9	** Many fans view Nikki from Season 8 as this, as she has stayed in the competition despite several lackluster performances and being on the bottom more than anyone else.
10	** The previous season, many felt that Penny was this; although her food was good, she proved pretty quickly to be such an over-the-top {{Jerkass}} that it was obvious that she wouldn't be able to ever gain fan support as a FN host. Many concluded that she was spared from elimination specifically to cause drama in the mansion and drive up the ratings.
11	** Despite being the third eliminated, Danushka from Season 9 managed to be this. It was quite obvious from the first episode that she had zero prospects in the competition, having a haughty, snobbish attitude, zero presentational skills, a dry and emotionless style of speech, and a voice that made most viewers wish that she would just stop talking, yet despite being in the bottom three every time the mentors still decided to eliminate two likable contestants with considerably more promise before her.
12	** Russell from Season 9 is definitely this in some capacity; he winds up on the bottom practically every single week, yet manages to stay into the competition because the mentors claim to see "potential" in him. And though he has fans of his own, this is not helped by the fact that fan favorites such as Viet and Chad were sent home while he was saved.
13	** Sarah filled this role in Season 10. She was consistently in the bottom group throughout the second half of the series, yet managed to avoid elimination until Episode 10. Online speculation (corroborated by Alton Brown's commentary on his Twitter account and the Food Network website) has it that the producers, for whatever reason, really liked Sarah, particularly her ongoing "talking head" commentaries.
14	** In Season 11, Dom was a rather notable EH, ending up in the bottom group 6 times before being eliminated...only to come back a couple of episodes later due to Star Salvation in order to make it to the finale.
15	** Season 12's Ana. Despite being at or near the bottom each week, with repeatedly poor camera presentations, as well as being unable to work as a team in any capacity, she keeps slipping by week after week, solely because of her cooking. This is even pointed out by Jernard and Damiano after the third instance in which, while working as a team, the one stuck with her ends up going home instead of Ana herself, though it was seen that her individual presentations were improving and she was the most consistently skilled cook of the lot.
16	* EnsembleDarkhorse:
17	** Season 7: Jeff Mauro. For the first leg of the competition the spotlight was mostly off him, as the show focused more on the drama that Penny was generating. However, he seemed likeable and every so often we got a glimpse of him being the DeadpanSnarker of the group. Gradually, he got to be featured more, as the more over-the-top contenders fell away, and got even more DeadpanSnarker moments (famously included the food truck ad where he tells Susie "You know what you need in your life? ''Balls!''" to sell some ball-shaped food). In general, Jeff seemed like the more down-to-earth but funny contender in the background for most of the competition. And in this case the dark horse won.
18	** Despite not particularly standing out in terms of performance and a relatively early elimination, Viet probably has one of, if not the, largest fanbases of Season 9 due to his proven exceptional culinary skills (having previously defeated Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America), {{Adorkable}} tendencies, and having a personality that seemed generally sweet, laid-back, and devoid of a "schtick".
19	** In the later phase of Season 10, Nicole rose to this status. She has shown considerable improvement over the course of the season. And she ended up in the final three. In fact, Food Network viewers actually voted to have Nicole's pilot go on to Food Network because of her genuine personality that did not overshadow the cooking she brought to the table.
20	** Rob "Lunch Lady" Burmeister in Season 12 is the next lovable, goofy GentleGiant. Bobby even notes that at the beginning, he believed Rob's personality and style would be hard to beat. This, however, does come right before his elimination, as he'd had a hard time improving in front of the camera.
21	* FridgeLogic: During S7's Iron Chef challenge, Vic uses a dollop of mint jelly to help flavor his lamb. Bobby Flay, tasting it, informs him that "Mint jelly has no place in the Series/IronChef kitchen." Vic quips to the ConfessionCam "Then why was the mint jelly ''in'' the Iron Chef kitchen?" When the clip re-aired at the reunion special, at got lots of applause and laughter from the other contestants, and even Bobby laughed and nodded.
22	* FriendlyRivalry: Sometimes upheld, sometimes subverted, depending on how that season's contestants interact with each other. For instance, Justin and Martie, from Season 8, not only formed a tight friendship, despite their being competitors, but together with their mentor/team leader Alton Brown became TrueCompanions during the later episodes. In contrast, several adversarial relationships (Sarah/Chris, Aryen/Lenny) appear to be sparking in the current Season 10; Sarah corrected a mistake Chris made, to Chris' resentment, and Lenny helped Aryen out only for Aryen to fail to give credit where credit was due.
23	* {{Narm}}:
24	** Season 7: During the later rounds, the judges are grilling the introverted Whitney about being more extroverted. The night of the comedy roast was a particularly bad night for Whitney, and the judges are telling her that she should have been funnier. A desperate Whitney, out of nowhere, earnestly says "I'm funny, Giada!" in the most unconvincing way possible. It actually ''was'' funny, just unintentionally.
25	** Season 6: During the Iron Chef challenge, Aria--pressed for time--runs through the studio shrieking "''POTATOES, POTATOES, POTATOES!!!''" (Alton Brown was left hiding his face in his hands and groaning). Doubles as a BigLippedAlligatorMoment, and quite possibly as a NeverLiveItDown moment that made Aria look like a basket case who couldn't keep her cool under pressure, which is likely why she was eliminated at the end of the episode, unfortunately.
26	** Also from Season 6, Italian immigrant Serena is being pressured by the judges to bring her Italianness up to eleven (much like what they did with Susie and her Mexican heritage the following season), and she's currently feeling desperate about her place in the competition. During that weeks' camera challenge, as soon as the camera starts rolling Serena holds her arms up in a V-shape over her head and loudly belts out "OH SOLE ''MIIIIIIIIIIOOOOO''!!!" while standing over a bowl of pasta she's prepared. It was ''hilarious'', and it ended up being featured heavily in commercials that week purely for the Narm value.
27	** In the season 8 ''Chopped'' style episode, there was more and more blatant ProductPlacement than usual. The judges then solemnly chided several of the contestants by saying "It's like you're trying to sell us something." It's hard not to laugh and mentally fill in "It's distracting us from enjoying these wonderful Hershey's brand chocolate bars!"
28	* TheScrappy:
29	** Penny, both in show and out. It really says something that she managed to make ''all'' of the other female contestants hate her guts to the point that they were all on another team during one challenge.
30	*** It seems quite a few people on the show and off were very happy when she was eliminated. See also TheReasonYouSuckSpeech that Jyll delivered to her.
31	*** Unfortunately she raised the ire of many again when she was brought back for the Iron Chef challenge and tried very hard to sabotage Mary Beth as much as possible with what was possibly the slowest chopping in the history of American television. So slow that normal home cooks would've run circles around her speed-wise. When [[Series/GoodEats Alton Brown]] asked her why she was chopping so slowly, Penny smirked and in a very sarcastic tone of voice replied "You know, I'm very methodical." The smirk on her face gives the impression that she was "very methodically" trying to sabotage Mary Beth.
32	*** The intentional sabotage was pretty much confirmed in the reunion show where they showed a never before seen clip of her saying that she just didn't care. One wonders if this will end bringing back the last X eliminated to help out for the Iron Chef Challenge.[[note]]Perhaps it did, there hasn't been an Iron Chef challenge since then.[[/note]]
33	*** During the reunion special she also said that she wouldn't change any of her behavior, even with all the grief if caused and the fact that it was a big part of why she was kicked off.
34	*** Penny was featured on an episode of ''Series/{{Chopped}} All-Stars''... and won. One can only imagine that anyone who has to work with or live with her will find her several orders of magnitude more insufferable than before. However, [[spoiler: it becomes Subverted when she lost in the second round of the finals.]] She was just as full of herself as she was on NFNS. [[spoiler: At one point, she actually suggested that Michael Symon and Marcus Samuelsson were intimidated by ''her''. She also made the ridiculous statement that she was going to conquer Food Network. There isn't much call for 7th place finishers on this show. Eventually, when Michael Symon was eliminated because he'd forgotten to plate some okra chips, Penny was ecstatic and starts crowing "The bragging rights alone! I took down an Iron Chef!" Uh, ''no'', Penny. You didn't. He just forgot an ingredient, so unless you somehow slipped him a drug that disoriented his memory, then ''no'', you ''didn't'' "take down an Iron Chef."]] In the next round, [[spoiler: however, Penny ends up being a victim of her own arrogance as usual...]] Oh and the best part? [[spoiler: When Penny gets eliminated because she put so much saffron that it tasted bad to the judges, and Judge Amanda Freitag delivers the decision, Penny whines to the ConfessionCam: [[SoreLoser "Who's really the saffron expert? Me, or Amanda?!"]] She then [[WeWillMeetAgain vows that this won't stop her from conquering Food Network...]]]]
35	*** Penny would get another chance to conquer Food Network through a ''Chopped''-like show that [[Series/CutthroatKitchen fits her cutthroat personality so perfectly.]] [[spoiler:Knowing her reputation on FN, '''everyone''' was ganging up on her. She is just as arrogant and cutthroat as usual.]] [[LaserGuidedKarma And karma finally hit her hard.]] [[spoiler:She was working on a soup when she spilled ''the whole blender'' all over herself AND the floor. She got cut and not even Alton could wait to see Penny out of there.]]
36	*** One of the other reasons why Penny became so heavily disliked aside from her horrible behavior and arrogance is the perception that she has a highly inflated opinion on her attractiveness, and tries to use sex appeal to sway the male contestants and judges - including things like pitching her show as [[GirlOnGirlIsHot Girl on Grill]], declaring that ''Cougartown'' is named for her, and working in the kitchen in heels and cleavage-revealing clothing. At least one guest judge declared her overemphasis on sexiness just makes her "trashy".
37	** As of Season Nine, Lovely could very well fit this trope. If you had hopes that any of your favorite contestants that could actually cook would return through ''Star Salvation'', Lovely manages to impress Robert with uncreative dishes[[note]]Caramel apples with crumpled up potato chips at the bottom that were supposed to be the star of the dish[[/note]], and isn't exactly sympathetic when she sends her fellow contestants home after ruining their second chances.
38	** Bob and Susie were definitely this, especially in Seasons 7 and 8 where they had quite a bit of screen time and talked continuously about the importance of "stories" and "[=POVs=]" but not focusing very much on the food. Thankfully, the show seemed to take notice of this in Seasons 9 and 10, as they have only appeared in a couple of episodes, and Bobby, Giada, and Alton (who generally take food into a bit more consideration and, as "Food Network Stars" themselves instead of executives, tend to give much more reasonable advice to let contestants come into their own) are the ones who give primary feedback and control eliminations.
39	** Season 10 probably holds the record for the most Scrappies in a season: a record setting ''three''.
40	*** Kenny. He was essentially a mean spirited version of Viet from season nine who couldn't cook, and he won the fan poll majority as to who should be eliminated when he was up for elimination both times in a row, being sent home the second time.
41	*** Sarah could be considered ''the'' Scrappy of the season. Subpar cook, having no clear POV (having no less than ''three''), being more interested in how she looks, having a piss-poor attitude and having a tendency to snigger over other contestants' failures, which created an even bigger hatedom. It started to come to the head in episode 6 when she started making a shit storm over Chris "stealing" all the beef. She was flagged as the person to go home that episode by the viewers but she stayed all the way to the top 4. There was much satisfaction when she finally got cut in Episode 10, though many speculated that the real reason was that the producers, who hitherto had been accused of being partial to her, no longer had a use for her "talking head" commentaries now that the series had run its course.
42	*** Lenny has his own hatedom for his over-the-top personality ''and'' ego who came off as being very fake at several points of the season. He seems to perform poorly when he doesn't have a direct audience, which is unfortunate considering that the job of a Food Network personality is mostly limited to a studio with no audience feedback. It only got exacerbated in the last two episodes, for the wrong reasons. Dirt uncovered on him shows him doing some very questionable things on the internet, having some vile stuff on Youtube that was since removed, and being so stalker-ish both on the internet and real life that the [[ManipulativeEditing edited]] clips of Lenny having a crush on Giada became very creepy. Through some of those videos, it is good evidence to support that cowboy demeanor was really an act. It is possible that Lenny [=McNab=] could have a ''[[RoleEndingMisdemeanor Career]]'' [[RoleEndingMisdemeanor Ending Misdemeanor]] before his tenure starts because the winner of FNS also gets a headlining event at the New York Food and Wine Festival.
43	** Matthew from Season 11. He's egotistical, and quick to point out the flaws in his competitors while being messy himself on a variety of different levels. None of the other contestants liked him, and in the end, his immaturity is what ended up getting him cut. He made quite an impact despite being featured for a mere ''two episodes''. He's back in Season 13, having won the "Comeback Kitchen" tryouts and his Scrappy status was {{Lampshaded}} by one of the other contestants when he was giving them advice about auditioning.
44	-->''"This is the guy who talked more about his hashtags than his food. So in one ear and out the other."''
45	* TearJerker: Some of the eliminations. Unlike ''Chopped'' and ''Cutthroat Kitchen'', the contestants spend weeks together, not hours, and can form bonds. So, when you have two or more contestants who form close friendships, and one of them gets eliminated, it's pretty darn depressing.
46	* TheWoobie: Alicia of Season 7.

Context YMMV / TheNextFoodNetworkStar